Acer and Apple storm UK market

In a recession plagued UK computer market, Acer and Apple reign

It is rather a contrast actually. Acer – one of the most value-for-money brands, and Apple – the most premier brand in the computer segment, gaining heavily in a single market. With the UK economy still in recession when most others have now emerged, the region still is lagging behind in the computer business than many other western European countries – like Germany and France. Gartner reports a Q3 that enables annual growth of 3.7% in Germany and 1.9% in France, but UK still has a negative growth rate.

This economic downtown could’ve given rise to an apparent polarization among the PC vendors. On one end low-cost players like Acer continues to steal show with increasing market share thanks to its aggressive entry-level and netbook strategy. On the other end Apple is gaining share with its premium offering.

"The decline in the PC market in the UK has slowed down and the return to growth will be slow and a difficult process," said Ranjit Atwal, principal analyst at Gartner, to Hexus. "While the consumer market continued to defy the economic environment, the business market was still very weak.

With the volatile economy, people are spending more cautiously – enter netbook which gives you the basic functionality alright at a fraction of the price, but professionals are not compromising on quality – which feeds Apple. Acer has a market share of 24.2% in Q3 2009 as compared to 17.4% same time last year. This is an increase of 35.5% - as reported by Hexus. Note that this data includes both desktops and notebooks, but the increase is mainly attributed to the widely popular Aspire One series. At the same time, Apple has increased its market share from 3.8% - 5% in Q3 2009 – an increase of 26.6%. HP used to be the biggest player, but due to its late adaptation to the netbook sector, the share falls to 17.5% in Q3 2009, after Acer and Dell. In fact no other shipment has seen a positive growth except Apple and Acer in third quarter. Dell falls down to 18.3% from 20.9% last year.

"With consumer spending restricted, mini-notebooks are becoming more appealing as they provide better functionality at the lower price points. Most of the PC vendors now offer mini-notebooks as they realise the importance of this category. Mini-notebooks represented more than 40 per cent of the total consumer notebook market in the third quarter of 2009.”

The netbook market has grown so much as to consist of almost 40% of all PC shipments. All major players have entered this market now except Apple which is rumored to bring up its own version of tablet shortly. These small machines and light on your pocket, but comes with all the necessary basic functions that you would expect a compact notebook to do. Although the CPU powers are less, which is not optimum for heavy graphical uses, but these mini machines come with excellent connectivity options and battery life – which is how they are being marketed. Acer and Asus were quick to respond to this change of trend, and gained immensely from that.